Cobra Water Mixable Oils for true painting freedom!

Imagine the joy of painting anywhere with no need for lugging around solvents! Cobra Water Mixable Oils are artist-quality oil paints allowing you the freedom to paint indoors or outdoors, with the same feel as painting with traditional oil paints - but with only the need to mix with water.

As an oil painter who loves working outside - in most weathers except drenching rain - I am finally relieved to see that Spring seems to be on its way. Good news, but for one thing. I have a perennial problem; solvents.

Loading up my ageing car with screw-top jars of solvents makes me uneasy. Transporting them across fields in my painting kit, hoping they don't leak, complicates my painting process. Acrylic painters are probably reading with a righteous glow as all they really need is a big pot of water and away they go!

In recent years, oil painters have had that option too with the development of water-mixable oils. As a dyed-in-the-wool traditional oil painter, I have to say that I found them a bit odd. Generally the texture wasn't the same, they didn't 'behave' like oil paint should. The colour was limited; in fact acrylics were much more versatile.

However, now I have the best of both worlds. I have been given a set of the new range of Cobra water-mixable oils to try out from Royal Talens, the makers of Rembrandt oils... and they are really good!

There are 70 high pigment quality colours in the 40ml tube range, and 30 colours in 150ml tubes. They are a true oil paint but as you work you wash your brushes out in water. And when you're back in the studio? Warm soapy water cleans everything up as good as new. These new Cobra Oils are very competitively priced for paint of such pigment quality in 4 series - starting at £4.40 for series 1*.

Whatever your painting style there is a Cobra medium to enhance your work, including Cobra paint medium equivalent to linseed oil, Cobra glaze medium and a colourless impasto medium which adds body but softens intensity of colour.

I am reallly looking forward to getting out into the countryside and trying them out, armed with my paints and a big bottle of water. Sky studies here I come!

*Series numbers explained. 
Good 'artist quality' paints, whether acrylic, oil or watercolour, are priced in series with Series 1 (or A) being the cheapest and higher series rising in price as the series number - or letter - goes up. This is because some ingredients are more expensive to obtain or to process and the series number reflects this. In general, Earth colours tend to be cheaper, (Series 1) and cadmium and cobalt colours are at the top end of the price range with high series numbers (5,6 or higher).